Agence France-Presse,
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the Iraqi Kurds on Monday that hostility toward his country could result in a “very heavy cost” for them in the future.
His warning came after Massud Barzani, the head of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, reportedly threatened to interfere in Turkey's affairs if Ankara continued to oppose Kurdish claims on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
“A northern Iraq which neighbours Turkey is gravely wrong in the way it is currently acting and this could result in a very heavy cost for them afterwards,” Erdogan told reporters.
Barzani has “overstepped the line”, he said. “I advise them not to say words they cannot live up to and to know their place because they could be later crushed under those words.”
But an Iraqi Kurdish presidency official urged Turkey to keep out of plans to settle the status of Kirkuk, which under the Iraqi constitution is scheduled to be decided in a referendum before the year-end.
“Massud Barzani's statement about Turkey was in reaction to declarations from the Turkish leadership and media against us and their threats to meddle,” in Iraqi Kurdish affairs, said Fuad Hussein, chief secretary of the presidency.
“We do not interfere in affairs of regional countries but also demand that others should also not interfere in Kirkuk because it is an internal issue. It belongs to Kurds, Turkmen and Arab and Assyrians,” Hussein told reporters.
He said Iraqi Kurds considered the scheduled referendum the proper recourse to solve the fate of Kirkuk, which sits atop a third of Iraq's oil wealth and would cement economic independence for Iraqi Kurdistan.
“Threats are not part of our political vocabulary. Our language has always been one of self defence. At the same time we do not accept others to use threats against us,” Hussein said.
The Turkish media quoted Barzani as saying at the weekend that Iraqi Kurds would meddle in Turkey's already restive, predominantly-Kurdish southeast if Ankara continued to oppose their ambitions to acquire Kirkuk.
Turkey says the referendum on Kirkuk's future status, scheduled to be held by the year-end, should be postponed, arguing that thousands of Kurds have been moved into the city to change its demography.
Following Barzani's reported remarks, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul also conveyed Turkey's annoyance to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a telephone conversation at the weekend, a senior Turkish diplomat told AFP.
Asked by reporters on Monday what Turkey's response to Barzani would be, Gul only said: “You will see.”
Ankara worries that Kurdish control of Kirkuk and its vast oil reserves would embolden what it believes are Kurdish ambitions to break away from Baghdad.
Kurdish independence, it fears, could fuel the two-decade Kurdish separatist insurgency in adjoining southeast Turkey, which has already resulted in more than 37,000 deaths.
Tensions are already high between the two sides over Turkish accusations that Iraqi Kurds tolerate, and even support, thousands of armed Turkish Kurd rebels who have found refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Ankara has threatened a cross-border operation into the region to crack down on the rebel camps if Baghdad and Washington fail to act against them.
Separately, the New Anatolian daily reported on Monday that Iraqi Kurdish objections to Istanbul were instrumental in Baghdad's decision to favour Egypt as the venue of international talks in early May to discuss Iraq's turmoil.
